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My band and I just released our second album!
Posted on Dec. 15, 2024.
Last week, my band and I released our second LP. All 9 songs were written by Julie (the lead singer and rhythm guitar player) and produced by me. Here are some notes on each of the songs:
01. Le hablé mal de vos a mi psicóloga:
This song was composed around September 2021. We played it live once around that time and never again until this year. It's the first song on the record but was the last one we recorded. Before doing so, when Julie and I were listening to the album, we felt it was missing a strong opening track. That's when we remembered this song and decided to record it. We actually had previously recorded a demo of the song two years prior (on December 14, 2022), and we ended up using the backing vocals from that session.
02. No pasa:
This is the first new song Julie sent me after we finished recording our previous album, Blue Blankets. It's a great song, and I love how the outro turned out—it was something that came up accidentally during rehearsals. We also made a music video for this song, here I talk about the proces of doing it.
03. Aléjate de mí:
I really like how dynamic this song is. I specifically remember trying to treat each part of the song separately and then gluing it all together to achieve this. That approach was inspired by John Frusciante’s The Empyrean: "We'd mix a verse or maybe a verse and chorus, and once we were sure we had it, we'd mix the next section. Then, I'd cut the half-inch tape together for the final master. John wanted drastic changes from section to section, and that's how we got it." That's engineer Ryan Hewitt taken from this interview. Additionally, Cry Baby Cry by The Beatles was used as a reference.
04. Nada tan mal:
This is probably my favorite song from the album. For the arrangement, I took inspiration from Such Great Heights by The Postal Service. I absolutely love the chorus on this one—it encapsulates something very real and honest for me.
05. Misterio:
What a hit! I love this song so much. I wish I could have made a better arrangement and mix, but it’s the best I could do for now. When Julie sent me the demo, I was astounded. Just when I thought she couldn’t compose more songs for the album, she came up with this amazing melody and chords. Just listening to the raw demo of her singing and playing her acoustic guitar already felt like a cover of a hit song. I could almost imagine how the full-band version would sound.
06. Están muertos:
I like this song because it feels so different from most of Julie's songs. I don’t know when she wrote it, but she sent me a demo on June 16, 2024. Before that, she had sent me a demo of the next song on the album, ¿Qué pensás?, and both of these songs have a distinct vibe compared to the rest of the album. When she sent me the demo, I happened to be listening to Obstacle 1 by Interpol, so I decided to create a backing track inspired by that song. Once Julie finished recording her vocals, I plugged in my guitar and recorded two takes without planning what to play, thinking, "Well, I’ll just press record and see if anything interesting comes up." I ended up using both takes but erased some mistakes while leaving others.
07. ¿Qué pensás?:
I love how the arrangement of this song turned out. Originally, it featured a lot more orchestral instruments—like an oboe, a French horn, and a viola—but they didn’t quite fit the song, so I decided to remove them. It was inspired by some of the untitled tracks from John Frusciante's Niandra LaDes album and the last part of Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt, where the song clips and generates distortion.
08. Todo a dónde vamos:
This is by far the oldest song on the record. I don’t know exactly when Julie composed it, but I have a demo recording from 2015, and we played it live fairly often between 2019 and 2020. There’s a little riff I play on the chorus that was inspired by Suha by Xiu Xiu.
09. El fin:
This is the last song Julie wrote for the album. It was recorded live with her on vocals and me on acoustic guitar on October 5. Later, I overdubbed the acoustic guitar, recorded the bass, and added a few MIDI parts. It’s also the only song on the album that wasn’t recorded to a click track.
That’s all for now! Be sure to check out our great website. Thank you for reading!
